Downvoter

A downvoter is someone who uses a YTMND account mostly to downgrade the rankings of many sites by giving them the lowest possible score. This is known at YTMND as downvoting. Rating any YTMND Template:* is also called a downvote. Once a site has been downvoted, its overall average rating suffers, making it difficult to restore and less likely to draw attention to potential viewers. What sets a downvoter apart from a normal user is a tendency to give a site a rating of Template:*- In some cases, this rating is given despite the site's quality. A well-timed downvote can be fatal to a new site, no matter what the quality: by the time some more people vote on the site, it will probably be off the main page.

Some downvoters often perform their actions by going to the profile of a targeted user and downvoting all their sites. This was accomplished without viewing the sites themselves. These are known as revenge or blind downvotes. Max has taken measures to prevent or discourage revenge downvoting by deleting duplicate accounts created for such purposes. One such occasion resulted in the deletion of 2,211 duplicate accounts, reversing over 250,000 votes. A feature was later implemented that required users to load a YTMND in their web browser before being allowed to vote on it.*

It's noteworthy that although YTMNDs must have been loaded before voting on them now, it's still rather easy for a person to open a site, immediately close or back out of it, repeat, and blind downvote/revenge downvote all of a user's sites, so although it takes more effort now, the action still occurs often on YTMND.

* Note: The actions taken to remove downvoters have slowed down to a complete stop with the last known prevention action being the banning of the leaders of the downvoters clan.

Downvoter Stereotypes

These are intended only to explain certain behavioral patterns regarding any given user's downvotes.

Amish Voters – These downvoters stick to a strange, rigid code of anti-progress, in which anything that consists of something even slightly different from the most primordial YTMNDs is considered instantly worthy of nothing more than a one. Even animation can often trigger the wrath of these downvoters, as well as the lack of text.

Attention Whores - Accounts created solely for the purpose of drawing attention to themselves. These may exist for any number of reasons, but in the world of the downvoter, an attention whore will generally one-star a site and leave an extremely abrasive or obnoxious comment (e.g. "you fail, please try again ^_^"), resulting in a very wide (and very bad) reputation. Also see Comment Spammer.

Citer - The opposite of the "Ashwill" - Downvotes a person's site because they don't cite their sources.

Classic - The original form of the Downvoter, These users will downvote just for the hell of it.

Critics - These users generally tend to express a higher level of rationality and discretion than other downvoters. If they give a site a rating of Template:*, they either offer constructive criticism (express or implied) that directs an author on how they must improve his or her YTMND, or they simply take time to seriously explain why they did not like that YTMND.

Fad Haters - Any users that will downvote any site that is centered around or makes references to a specific fad. For example, a site featuring Bill Cosby's voice remixed into music will result in downvotes from users that despise the Cosby fad.

4Chan Haters - Users who downvote sites whose images come from 4Chan. Unlike the other categories, more hardcore YTMNDers can fit in this category.

Glory Hogs - A user that has a site that makes it to the Up and Coming section that will downvote the other sites in up and coming to keep theirs in that section.

Grammar Nazis or Grammar Gestapo - These users will downvote on the slightest indication of a spelling or grammatical error. Generally, this applies to text-heavy YTMNDs.

Hate-Only Voters - Users who only vote when they dislike a site, and never vote when they like or sort of like a site. Often confused for Classic Downvoters, except they vote far less often.

Impoverished Voters- These users have horrible computers, and feel the need to take it out on the rest of the internet. As such, anything that doesn’t work in their AOL browser, synch with their dial up connection, or just takes “too long” to load is instantly downvoted.

John Kerry's - Users who usually downvote Poland or KHANTMND sites because they forgot Poland.

Observers - Users who aggressively downvote yet have never created their own ytmnd nor contributed in any way to the site.

Politicial downvoters - Users who downvote anything, that have some content opposing their political views, most often to do with Anti-Bush, Anti-Obama, or Anti-Mccain/Palin sites.

Anti-Politicial downvoters - Users who downvote anything that has to do with politics, regardless of which viewpoint it represents. Their mantra is "YTMND is for humor, not politics"

Rebel Downvoters - These are users who downvote popular or highly rated sites simply to show how non-conformist they are or to draw attention to themselves. If a comments page has gone too long without a downvote, the "be different" mantra imbedded into these kids' heads in the 80's and 90's will trigger and they'll feel the need to comment with a low rating.

Revenge Downvoters - Generally, the revenge downvoter delivers a rating of one star to all of a particular user's sites. This is often due to receiving a ranking from the victim of the revenge downvoter that the downvoter considers unfair or unsatisfactory or as countermeasures against said kinds of votes on popular sites or sites made by popular users.

Shock Haters - These users will downvote shock sites and sites featuring animal cruelty. One incidence of this resulted in the birth of the NEDM fad.

Top Haters - Users who downvote top-rated sites, saying that they 'don't deserve to be in a top-#'.

Vigilantes- These users either seek and downvote stolen content, or downvote it when they come upon it. This group also seems to be evolving a subculture of pseudo-Vigilantes, who usually fall under one of the other stereotypes, but does not actually attack stolen content, but instead preys upon the general hatred towards stolen content from YTMNDers in order to generate misinformed downvotes, and sometimes, quite successfully.

Anti-Bronies - Users who downvote anything to do with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Downvoters as a fad

Downvoters have become so common, that it has itself become a fad. Fad sites will show various "red stars" edited into movie/TV clips and fads. Fad sites often show the "one star" causing damage or another person avoiding/preventing one star status. Two downvoters appeared at the bottom of Color ME YTMND, showing up as slimy mollusks.